Ok, Red Door Tech Services is somewhat off the ground. After last week, I got 2 customers. One was Matt B.'s mom, whom I've known for years. She saw the Nextdoor post and reached out. I visited her and helped her with her issues for several hours. She was very fair and paid for my help and was happy with the service I provided.
I also reconnected with Matt's sister, Jill, while I was there. Not much has changed with her and her mom. They are perfect roommates for each other and what is wonderful about that family is what you see is what you get. They speak the truth and pull no punches and it just works.
I had another person reach out via Nextdoor. This person was new to me, named Lisa H. Her son's Dell desktop was having issues and after talking to her, it sounded like maybe a corrupt profile in Windows, as well as maybe a CMOS battery issue.
Sunday was when I agreed to meet her. I went to her house, which was close and beautiful, and met with her son, Finn. Turns out he goes to NHS as well and knows of Riley (though Rye said he didn't know Finn). He had some guitars and basses and I broke the ice with music talk.
Working with his computer, I found the 3 orange/1 white blinking light indicated a failing CMOS battery. His profile was a little tricker, as it was intermittently booting into the proper profile, and most of the time booting to something that was failing. I determined that I could probably fix the profile, but it would take a bunch of time booting and rebooting, waiting to get into the appropriate profile, before migrating to a new profile. Instead, we stopped at an hour, and I gave him some guidance on how to continue. Lisa was super happy with my service and I was on my way shortly after.
I've been putting some posts on Facebook as well, and my friend, Alan, from the Close Seconds, messaged me. His law firm's IT guy recently passed and he needs someone in the interim. I talked to him yesterday and it seems like there may be stuff I can help him with. He was to talk to his team yesterday and get back to me. I hope to hear from him soon.
I headed back to Jill's house yesterday as well; she was going to give me her old MacBook Pro. I took it home and have been spending several hours getting her data off of it, and trying to simply get the most updated OS onto it. The Mac is from late 2011, and though it's not rocket science to work with, it is challenging as it is pretty new to me.
The good news is, she hardly used it, so aside from a jacked up power cord, the computer itself seems to be in great shape. My plan is to use it as a macOS learning tool, more than anything else. Currently, I'm trying to unbrick it after I formatted the HDD into something the old OS couldn't recognize. It seems to be working, and I'm hoping it'll be close to factory condition sometime soon.
Last night, I created a new Facebook "business" page. I should have just started there. Using Nextdoor is a giant pain, but I understand why I need footprints on both platforms. I'm also taking Riley's old iPhone and will be getting a SIM card for it, using our family's 5th phone line, and start using this phone to conduct business with, if I can ramp it up.
I'm currently waiting for the FB invites to go out; for whatever reason, even though I've tried sending 3 times, FB keeps saying they'll be sending the invites out soon. I just hope people aren't hit up 3 times; that would be awkward.
